In the Media: Food & Drink

No less than Jonathan Gold, the esteemed Los Angeles Timesrestaurant critic, has suggested that food now occupies the cultural airspace once devoted to music. So it follows that food critics — and food bloggers, food-source polemicists, and writers concerned with the lives of chefs — would assume the mantle once worn by rock critics. They lead a national cultural conversation, and — more to the point — they have the jobs every other journalist secretly wishes they had.

Consider: The New York Times’Pete Wells may be the “first viral restaurant critic,” as Slate’s Isaac Chotiner suggested. Wells is certainly the most viral critic at the Times, showing food criticism’s status versus, say, movie criticism.

The Scylla to Wells’s Charybdis is Gold, who in a 2016 documentary can be seen cruising strip malls in his green Dodge truck looking for his next great Southern Thai meal. In Los Angeles, Gold is less a food critic than a civic hero. In the film, one admirer compares his literary vision of Los Angeles to Raymond Chandler’s.

The New Yorker, which began publishing a food issue annually in 2007, now overflows with food writing. Adam Gopnik, Dana Goodyear, and Bill Buford have collected the smudged napkins discarded by A.J. Liebling and Calvin Trillin. The magazine isn’t just turning it monocle on chefs (Yotam Ottolenghi, Damon Baehrel) but on food writers. In the last six months, it has run profiles of Wells and Anthony Bourdain.

For his part, Bourdain, who hosts Parts Unknown, is not just the model of a globe-trotting gourmand. He has pulled off a miracle: He hosts a show on CNN and is not held up as an example of the depravity of cable news.

Years ago, Besha Rodell, who’s now the restaurant critic at the L.A. Weekly, told an editor at Vice (then a mere magazine) that she wanted to write about food for him. The editor was flummoxed: “You are so not the audience we’re going for.” Today, you need only toe-dip into the Vice empire to find a story titled, “The Quiet Genius of the Most Underrated Japanese Chef in Paris.”

Adam Sachs, the editor-in-chief of Saveur, told me he used to merely nod at a couple of dog-walkers in his New York neighborhood. Then Sachs appeared on the episode of Netflix’s Chef’s Table starring Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson. All of a sudden, the dog-walkers got very interested in him. As Sachs recalled, “They stopped me and said, ‘You know Magnus?’”

The same glamour-adjacent pleasures that once drew writers to rock now draws them to food. “It used to be that the cheesy boomer binary was, do you like the Beatles or the Stones?” said Jeff Gordinier, the food and drinks editor at Esquire. “Now, it’s are you Gabrielle Hamilton or Dan Barber? Are you David Chang or Alex Stupak? It’s become the cultural conversation.”

Yet when I told Corby Kummer, the longtime Atlantic food writer, that a horde of writers were following his path, he said incredulously, “And they feel they’re going to make money at it?”

This — no pun intended — is the rub. Just as the world has minted enough Bourdain-worshipping, elusive-taco-truck-hunting foodies to create a reliable audience for food writing, it is struggling to pay for it. Music is cheap to stream, and even cheaper to steal. You have to pay $700 for the privilege of panning Per Se. If everyone wants to be a food critic, who’s going to pick up the bill?

Everybody’s writing about food,” said Barbara Fairchild, the former editor of Bon Appétit, “and everyone I meet is a lawyer who wants to be a food writer. It’s really getting kind of freaky out there.” Figuring out what happened is like determining which L.A. eatery invented the French dip sandwich. It’s a long, occasionally winding road but entirely worth the journey.

Perhaps the biggest reason food writing has new status is that American food has new status. By the mid-2000s, “you have a confluence of a coherent food blogosphere coming into being,” said David Kamp, author of The United States of Arugula, “plus you have more and more young chefs and restaurateurs being a little more enterprising.”

Mitchell Davis, the executive vice president of the James Beard Foundation, said the rises of food culture and food media are almost always linked. In 19th-century France, the new middle-class cooking was documented by L’Almanach des Gourmands, which Davis called a “proto-blog” — the Eater of its day. “Otherwise, there’s no sharing of the art form,” Davis said. “You can perform a concert in the town square and the whole city can hear it. You can’t do that with food.”

The second reason for the rise of food writing is the democratization of restaurants. In 1975, when Jane and Michael Stern pitched their first Roadfood guide to cheap, regional restaurants, they were met with bewilderment. “The editor had a hard time convincing the publisher that there were enough interesting restaurants in the United States of America to fill a guidebook,” Michael Stern told me. The Sterns will publish the 10th edition of Roadfood this month.

“The word ‘foodie’ was not yet coined,” Michael Stern continued. “In those days, if you were into food it meant you were into French or Continental food. … Writing about barbecue and clam shacks and chicken-dinner halls was just not something people had thought of doing. … What’s happened in a way is that we as Americans have gotten over our culinary inferiority complex.”

By 2014, when The New York Times changed the name of its “Dining” section to “Food,” the transformation was complete. There’s still plenty of writing about fancy restaurants (look at the bombs Ryan Sutton and Pete Wells set off inside Per Se). But more writers are following in the footsteps of the Sterns or Calvin Trillin, traversing Brooklyn or the Brooklyns of America to discover a new chef or trend.

There are food writers who mourn the changeover. “If it’s new-casual and organic or farm-to-table, there’s a tendency for it all to be praised,” said Alan Richman, an award-winning food writer who wrote for GQ and other magazines. “Then there’s these nut-bag trends. Remember the ramen burger?”

Food writing is also sustained by a deeper interest in where food comes from. You can draw a line from writers like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan to a site like Civil Eats. As with every other corner of journalism, President Trump has provoked interesting food writing, from chef Allison Robicelli’s piece about how Obamacare helped restaurant workers to the recent Times feature about a chef who was deported from the United States years ago and is now making Mexico City’s food great again.

In a fully digitized world, food offers the promise of writing about something tangible. “I feel like people are longing for connection,” said the writer Jason Tesauro. “We’ve gotten to a place where soul and authenticity and genuineness — there’s a dearth of it about. A lot of food writing just deals with surface — it’s restaurant reviews and hype and ‘Look at what I’ve found that you haven’t heard about yet.’ But peel that back and what you’re really getting is an excuse to write about what’s real.

L.A. Weekly’s Rodell said: “I would love to think Americans all of a sudden are really interested in pleasure and culture and community. But, really, I think they’re interested in commerce and status, probably.” Either way, they’re reading about it.

While on the go, the average traveler might typically defer to a quick internet search to help guide them to the best food. But the problem with a keyword search is that it can only yield what’s already out there—and the restaurants that are most mentioned, aren’t always the restaurants that are most worth dining in. The last situation any traveler wants to get stuck in is an overpriced and under-impressive tourist trap meal. We've all had them—the ones that leave you full of dissatisfaction and a hefty case of eater's remorse.

And while Yelp reviews and message boards can be helpful in validating the quality of food in a restaurant you're already interested in, they don’t always help you find the restaurants you didn’t know you were looking for. You know, the places that the locals eat at. The places that help you expand your palette. The places that turn your trip into an experience. The places that make you want to fly back just for a chance to order the same meal twice. The places where you couldn’t help but take a blurry overhead wannabe-blogger photo because you didn’t know how else to act out your appreciation. Those are the kinds of meals you want to have when you’re traveling, and the best way to find them isn’t always intuitive.

The best resource you can have while traveling hungry is the instinct of a seasoned foodie or chef. We’ve pooled together some prime insights from a collection on exceptionally sharp members of the culinary elite—here’s how they find the best food while traveling in a new city, without any help from Yelp.

Jason Tesauro, Writer, Speaker, Sommelier

"When I'm in a new place, I look for three markers. One, I'm looking for things that I don't have back at home. I stick to ethnic [cuisine]. Two, I look for evidence that something fresh is happening. I look for handwritten signs with specials. I want to know that the place isn't overstocked with dry goods. I want to know that they're going with what they've recently hunted and gathered. I want to smell fresh bread being made. I want to see bikes and dogs tied up outside to show that people went out of their way to get there. Three, I'm looking for something that's off the main boulevard. I'm looking for a place that's putting more money into ingredients than rent on a flashy street. I'm ignoring what the convention bureau wants me to pay attention to!""

Jason Tesauro, bon vivant and master wordsmith, delivered a compelling address as a recap of Richmond's dining scene over the past year at The Elbys. The awards show and after party took place at The Altria Theater. For a full transcript and recording, see below.

Photo courtesy Richmond Magazine

"More than 800 guests, bedecked in their beaded, feathered finest, turned out for the sixth annual Elbys, the Richmond region’s restaurant awards, hosted by Richmond magazine at the Altria Theater on Sunday evening.Named after master chef Chef Paul Elbling, who now oversees Richmond's French Food Festival, the Elbys honor the work of Richmond chefs, restaurateurs, servers, purveyors and the industry’s philanthropists. This year’s awards ceremony and reception, in keeping with the circa-1927 theater venue, celebrated Prohibition-era chic." - Richmond Magazine

DO YOU GIVE A FORK?On the occasion of the 6th Annual Elbys...From a decent gentleman who felt like going Rogue.

Moonshine for milesI might not go so far afield as Chesterbut for a flask of Belle IsleI've ventured to Manchester.Caught a buzzzzzz with Blue Beespiced it up with Crunch Dynastygone awry with Reservoir DistilleryNightingale Ice CreamerySon of a Texas Beach bloody.

Let's talk philanthropy:Jessica Bufford from Talley's Meat & 3Aline Reitzer and Joe Sparattarepresenting JerseyMichelle Jones out to Pastureis a great Comfort to me.Spoonbread, Shagbark, Laura LeeHey, Lee Gregorylet me get a word infor you and family Murden.All the love I've feltin and above The Roosevelt.

Oh, and this just inalong with Mrs. AndersonDogu, Evrim, Sub Rosa, weirdour mustachioed prince of breadis also up for a Beard.Who could ask for anything more?

More Employees of the YearMary, Edwuan, HoseaWhat up playa?When we go to Nota BeneI don't feel like Pizza TonightAntler & Fin Boka roadkill quite a sightAnother one of Michelle Williams's visions:Water Grill morphed into East Coast ProvisionsWegman's came and Southern Season wentCurry Craft: Mel, I woulda helped pay the rent!Grace St. Confession: never been to Wong Gonzalezbut dig me some Rapp Session.

Remember that time whenRTD struck food-writing gold?Scoops are normally not a sinoops, turns out that journalist's Gold touchwas LA Times' Jonathan.Every anti-copy-and-pasterrushed to lambaste herElliott Shaffner left the fieldbut she ain't the only one who keeled:Chris Bopst left a markOwen Lane left town,

But then hella sad and too soonTed Santarella and Kurt Moon.Everyone who knew themwould not have asked for anything more.

Create or imitate:what defines our dine psyche?I likey like "Hey, Mikey" whenwe're innovative or trueto our roots in the regionand whence we all cameI need you to be authenticbut soulful is the nameof the game we must claim for our scenethis is all right nice and glossywith Richmond MagazineI don't mean to be bossy, but set your sight beyondthe borders of your platethe corners of our stateawait your day-tripping, night sipping,beer crawl to a distilleryor above Secco and Julia's swillerycuz I'm with her like Hillaryfrom The Pit to the Peellet's get real Stoned and Steamedthree sheets and Three Notch'dabove The Veilwith an ale from Hardywoodour big daddy but notour only Championeveryone's brother's got a masha stash of Berliner Weisse not whiterthan Trapezium or Triple Crossingand then there's Buskey CiderHow 'bout them apples?cool, but it ain't gonna replace wine in the chapelat Can Can Brasserieyour mark-ups are too high for me.Instead of saying, can I get a loan, yo?I spill Dolcetto and dollars at Enoteca Sognoor Lejha, where Sunny, man of leisure,always has a grin and crisp cheninto pair with mid-Atlantic's best vindalooand Acacia, too, keeps its wine list noblelike rot Botrytisbut I gotta implore other peeps: invite us,Me and Master Somm Robert Jonesgot a few bones to pick with yous dudeswhose crews can't properly usewine screws, serviettes or decantersmistaken mostly for vases and planters.Some don't know the difference between Pinot and Portbecause our city is growing faster than our talent can support.

I've got K TownGoatocadoSen OrganicWho could ask for anything more?

I could. And so should you.I'm here to praise and poeticizenot to preach – that was last year –but it comes with a pushfor answersforget that vexing electionI got pressing questions.

Are you better off than 1 year ago?Where did you go?What did you eat?Who did you help?How did you challenge yourself your staff your guests your palate your skills?

Compost, recyclefind something healthier than herointo fight off the funks hire undocumented workers and fire tweezer punks don't get a butcher tattoo, yo, if you can't chiffonade basil, bro. Sustainability, boy, isn't just about a local acre of tatsoiit's how you restock the loo and dish soap, Boo,Did you know that PFG is headquartered here, too?

I've got Nileup in Church HillStill need a groceryWho could ask for anything more?

In Elbys past,I cried, avast, get thee to your kitchenNow, I say, it's time to get out and gothat's how we growput out the sign:gone fishin'hand your apron to your sousand join our comrades on the mission.All those legends in your books,did I mention, were just cookswhen they joked and said,"We want to change the world!"And when I broke breadwith David Chang he hurledwisdom with Jacques Pepin,"If you want to be smarter,know it matters less what's in your larderthan what's in your heart."The art of food and drink, I thinkis not in the church of egobut in the steeple of peoplewho give a fork.

Yes, you must toil in the soiland bring that pot to a boilbut that's craftand I don't mean to be daftbut that should be a givenif you're livin' your passion.Just as the writer has to read,to achieve F & B masteryyou must eat and drinkand get your ass from quart containersto passport stamps and Spain orsteer to Staunton with Ian Boden at The Shack.Or Charleston, Atlanta, Houston, Chicagopack to snack and tastethen return to your crew and bastethem in the secret sauce of placeand watch their face"What's that nutmeggy spice, Chef? Mace?"

Because when you give a forkyou move the needle.That love in Autumn Olive porkstarted when those pigs were fetalthat's not to say my wine stem must say Riedel,but it must say something,whether by screw cap, box or cork,that shows that you and your somm give a flipping fork.

Who could ask for anything more?

I could ask you to give a fork.Do you give a fork?Tell me, "We give a fork!"Do you give a fork?We give a fork.Louder. Do you give a fork?We give a fork.Do you give a fork?We give a fork.Who could ask for anything more?

Take a peek inside the kiln to learn how pizza gets made

“I call her my fire-breathing dragon,” says Jenna Sneed, chef and owner of Fresca on Addison. “She has a personality and you have to talk to her sweetly.” Sneed keeps her gas-powered dome humming at 800 degrees all day; it can’t run below 500 overnight, “or else it takes too long to heat back up.”

At its heart, an oven is about two things: temperature and heat distribution. While most any oven will make good pizza, strict certifications, precise ratios and refraction dictate a great oven’s floor runs at 750 to 800 degrees, while the dome nears 1,000. At these temps, dough cooks in 90 seconds. And when a pizza is lifted to the dome, toppings are blistered in even fewer. “But it’s not easy to use,” says Randall Doetzer, executive chef of Nota Bene. He spins pizzas around the deck to work his Neapolitan oven’s hot and cold spots. “With so many variables, I can do a hundred pizzas just fine and then wreck the next one. It’s humbling.”

Then there’s the fuel. Wood is sexy, but it’s also dirty, full of oils and tough to control. Coal is cleaner but it’s hard to get the fire started, and more difficult to master. Lots of pizzerias keep oven-side piles of cordwood or coal, but don’t get burned by marketing; if that wood or coal isn’t the primary heat source, it’s just a fancified gas oven.

It's time for your week-in-food review, which, fortunately for you, comes complete with an old-timey PSA, some fried chicken, a new late-night option and a whole lotta beer:

Welcome to Friday! Let's kick it off with a bit of fun: Tickets for the sixth annual Elby Awards are now on sale! This year we're bringing "Prohibition chic" to the historic Altria Theater with a burlesque/variety show and a few surprises, all in celebration of the Richmond area's dining scene and those who make it happen. "But Stephanie," you might be thinking, "what am I supposed to wear to this event, where costumes are always part of the fun?" To you I say fear not, because my co-host Jason Tesauro and I are here to help. We made this very handy wardrobe PSA just for you, and we hope it answers any questions you might have! (We shot this in one take and my pipes had frozen during the snowstorm last weekend, so my hair is not looking 100-emoji good, but I still think we look pretty fly, in part due to the fine apparel from Blue Bones Vintage.) After the ceremony — which kicks off at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 19 — we'll head downstairs for the official after-party, where there'll be drinks and eats and dancing. Who's excited?? THIS BROAD. Need a refresher on which restaurants, chefs and purveyors are nominated this year? Jitterbug your way right over here.

Harvard Square’s Waypoint receives a visit from the New York Times’sJason Tesauro, who dives into the wood-fired pizza, snacks, and pasta. Tesauro writes that the fried smelts are crispy, the tallow fried peanuts are a clever snack, and the Royal Osetra caviar becomes fun alongside doughnut holes and blinis. The roast lamb shoulder is “umami-rich,” Tesauro writes, and the daily crudo is worth hogging for “its balance of salt, acid and buttery olive oil.”

There’s wood-fired pizza, lots of fried snacks and house-made pasta. But there’s also seafood, a sexy absinthe bar and sleek décor. It is a place vibrant enough for a happy hour pop-in, yet intimate enough for after-dark canoodling over caviar and cocktails. Waypoint, whose name means a stopping point in a journey, is all of these things — and a destination unto itself.

“This is the next step in my trajectory as a chef,” said Michael Scelfo, the chef and owner, who also runs Alden & Harlow, barely a half-mile away. That next step is particularly focused on seafood. His fried smelts plate with ramp rémoulade and fried lemons and jalapeños was crispy, both kinds of hot and easy to divide around the communal table during a recent visit. Tallow fried peanuts with anchovy and pickled fish peppers made a clever snack, especially when paired with the Estate Grown, a creamy house cocktail of Martinique rhum, pistachio falernum and hierbas dotted with lime-and-herb oil.

Powerhouse women convened for one of the most highly-anticipated seminars at MAD5, the international food symposium in Copenhagen in August. Yet its speaker, chef Iliana Regan, hadn’t prepared a word. And then, off the cuff, she nailed two hot-button issues chefs face: gender roles in the kitchen and the industry’s mental health. “I know my business, my craft, but I can barely some days get out of bed,” Regan said. “It’s the topic I don’t want to talk about, but it’s necessary. Why am I having the best year of my life and still taking Wellbutrin?”

This kind of gravitas is what Noma’s Rene Redzepi intended when he founded MAD (Danish for “food”) with Momofuku’s David Chang. “Typical food festivals are about the now of your menu and showing your marvels,” he said. “But MAD is about community- building, problem-solving.” Now in its fifth year, MAD aims to improve the global state of food, empower the industry’s people, and connect communities to their seasons and landscapes.

RICHMOND, Va. — It starts in January, if you can believe it. It might seem like there are 11 long months until November, but I know better. Just after the New Year’s buzz fades, it’s time to get down to business– wrangling sponsors, calling chefs, organizing, promising, and emailing — so much emailing — to make sure Fire, Flour & Fork goes off with as few hiccups as possible.

GRAPETIONARY, AROUND THE WORLD IN WINESaturday, November 19 from 1:00 to 1:30, Vagabond

Do you love wine? I mean do you really, really love it to the point where you want to run a gauntlet of 26 wines before 2:00 in the afternoon? In that case, there’s no better spirit guides for your quest than Jason Tesauro and his team of sommeliers...

Ever since René Redzepi announced that he’d be closing what’s been possibly the most celebrated restaurant in the world, the only thing harder to find at Noma than out-of-season vegetables are reservations. Fortunately, there’s a workaround. Just a summer plum’s toss from Noma’s back door, Mr. Redzepi has opened 108, a stylishly casual alternative that’s a third of the price, yet far more than half as good. Prep cooks run ingredients back and forth between the two kitchens, but a Noma alumnus, Kristian Baumann, is firmly at the helm.

Chef stalkers will find Noma staffers starting their mornings at 108, where an adjacent venue called the Corner doubles as a top-flight coffee shop with tea and pastries by day and a modern enoteca with beer and snacks by night. “It’s a friendly vibe,” Mr. Baumann said. “I wanted people to relax and have fun with family or a group of friends.”

Although 108 officially opened on July 27, it began as a 13-week pop-up at Noma while Mr. Redzepi and company were off cooking in Australia. The kitchen is already in practiced rhythm, and the first dish, like many on the menu, had the hallmarks of Noma’s creative...

At the fifth MAD Symposium — Denmark’s annual culinary twist on the Butterfly Effect, where small acts lead to large outcomes — a young cook from India, Ashwami Manjrekar, landed a gig with Rosio Sanchez, the Mexican-American chef from Chicago who opened a now-famous taqueria in Torvehallerne. That two women from disparate cultures on opposite sides of the earth found common ground over tacos under a circus tent is just one example of how MAD Symposium is arguably the most impactful food movement around.

Founded by Noma restaurant’s chef/owner/visionary, René Redzepi, MAD (the Danish word for “food”) is a not-for-proﬁt organization that aims to spread ideas, forge new relationships, discuss injustices and update – in real time – the global playbook for an ethical, sustainable food culture. This year, organizers pared the guest list from 1,500 applicants to a vital 350 catalysts from 43 countries who promised to engage, collaborate, expostulate, break bread — and break barriers.

From August 28-29, attendees were delivered by kanalrundfart (canal boat) to an undeveloped peninsula jutting between the Baltic Sea and Atlantic Ocean, to explore the MAD5 theme of Tomorrow’s Kitchen via two questions: What do we hope our kitchens will be like in the future? And what can we do today to make those dreams a reality? After hot debate, cold beer, laughs, tears and enough Norwegian mackerel to trigger a tent-wide omega-3 brain-boost, one truth emerged: The answer is not in the food, but in the people behind it. Barefoot in rolled-up pants, the DC-based chef/humanitarian José Andrés, one of this year’s keynote speakers, paced over pine straw laid inside the not-for-profit organization’s signature red circus tent — where he delivered a TED Talk–like sermon imploring cooks, restaurateurs, suppliers, food writers and tastemakers to “provide for others what you want for yourself.” Heads nodded and fingers snapped in united affirmation.

With nearly 100 different sessions running throughout the symposium, countless secondary topics – from millennial chefs and microbial terroir to alpha females and food waste...

One of Richmond's favorite Ethiopian restaurants reemerges in Church Hill

By Jason Tesauro, August 19, 2016

Ten years after founding the original Nile on Laurel Street, the Teklemariam family is bringing its Ethiopian restaurant to Church Hill.

Brothers Yoseph and Benyam Teklemariam first laid eyes on the 96-year-old commercial building at 306 N. 29th St. years ago but settled into the VCU district instead. Now, after eight years near the college, a continuing hot-bar arrangement at Ellwood Thompson's, and a brief collaboration with Portrait House in Carytown, they've reemerged with a new space of their own, which soft-opened Tuesday in the former Str8 Out of Philly location. While the brothers Teklemariam get a feel for their new business, you can stop by for dinner...

1 North Belmont's Frits Huntjens takes to Petersburg for a new restaurant and farmers market concept

By Jason Tesauro, May 13, 2016

Six years ago, one of Richmond’s most elegant restaurants closed its doors. 1 North Belmont, where Stuzzi currently resides, was a victim of both an economic downturn and an untenable spot on the sophisticated fringe of RVA’s dining scene in those hungry years before The Roosevelt, Secco Wine Bar, Pasture, The Magpie and Heritage energized our city.

Soon after the closure, chef and owner Frits Huntjens packed up his knives, clogs and Dutch accent and traded the turbulent life of an independent toque for a sweet corporate gig in North Side as the executive chef of Westminster Canterbury, a top-tier retirement community. And now, he’s unveiling an ambitious master plan to take his talents south. South to Petersburg. “Two investors are putting their money – well north of a million dollars – where their mouth is," says Huntjens, "and where everyone else’s mouth will be.”

“Mingle,” the assistant director tells us. “Pretend like you’re meeting each other for the first time!”

Apparently, we aren’t mingling aggressively enough for the crew of WGBH’s “A Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking.” They take away the tables around us, and unexpectedly, while I tip a raw oyster back that’s still ever-so-slightly attached to its shell, a camera is in my face. It can’t be pretty.

I’m at Merroir restaurant, on the Middle Peninsula in Topping, and the PBS show is filming an episode for its fourth season. “A Moveable Feast” follows Australian chef Pete Evans while he travels throughout America to taste regional specialties.

Richmond’s dining elite brushed off their finest white attire to attend the Elby’s (en blanc) last Sunday at the VMFA. Dutch & Company took the honor of Best Restaurant, while Vagabond chef Owen Lane was named chef of the year. Richmond Magazine put on a great show, complete with a winged, sermon-spouting Jason Tesauro; a Bjork-goose-dressed, albino wookiee, and Leia-bunned Stephanie Breijo; and plenty of f-bomb dropping chefs for good measure. Gotta keep things authentic, after all.

What do you get when you blend a Southern revival and an episode of “Top Chef” with a pinch of summer camp and prison break, all dry rubbed and left to cook on the spit?

That would be Lambstock 2012 — the third annual leave-no-trace camping trip for the farm-to-table set.

From Aug. 18 to 21, 125 intrepid farmers, chefs and mixologists assembled at Border Springs Farm in Patrick Springs, Va., near the North Carolina border. There were no tickets for the event, no invitations, no V.I.P. guest lists. Just tents and R.V.’s, a huge bonfire, a festive stage and a simple pavilion for cooking and gathering. Only the essentials were hauled in: fire, fat back, free-wheeling fellowship with bourbon.